August 28, 2007

A Defender of Bush’s Power, Gonzales Resigns

By PHILIP SHENON and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced his resignation on Monday, ending a stormy tenure at the Justice Department that was marked by repeated battles with Congress over whether he had allowed his intense personal loyalty to President Bush to overwhelm his responsibilities to the law.

Mr. Gonzales, the nation's first Hispanic attorney general, offered no clear explanation of the reasons for his departure or its timing. The announcement caught his top aides at the Justice Department by surprise, leading to speculation among lawmakers and department officials that Mr. Gonzales may have felt pressure from within the administration to step down.

In a statement to reporters Monday on the airport tarmac in Waco, Tex., as he prepared to board Air Force One, Mr. Bush said he had "reluctantly" accepted the resignation and portrayed Mr. Gonzales as a "man of integrity, decency and principle" who had been hounded from office for political reasons.

"It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud," he said.

For months, Mr. Gonzales, with what appeared to be Mr. Bush's full backing, had rebuffed bipartisan calls for his ouster and suggested that he intended to remain indefinitely at the Justice Department, possibly through the end of the Bush presidency.

The most persistent calls for his resignation came from Democrats who questioned whether Mr. Gonzales had lied under oath about his involvement in the dismissals of several United States attorneys. He was also accused of misleading Congress about his role, in his earlier job as White House counsel, in promoting a government eavesdropping program.

Mr. Bush said Monday that Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, the Justice Department's chief lawyer before the Supreme Court, would serve as acting attorney general until a permanent successor was chosen for Mr. Gonzales, who is scheduled to step down Sept. 17.

White House officials said the president expected to find a successor quickly, though associates of some prospective candidates said the White House would struggle to find someone who was well qualified and could be easily confirmed.

Among the candidates, they said, were Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security and a former federal appeals court judge and top Justice Department official; Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; George J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general under the first President Bush; Laurence H. Silberman, a court of appeals judge in Washington; and Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general who is now senior vice president and general counsel of PepsiCo Inc. White House officials said Mr. Thompson would have special appeal as a nominee, as he would be the first black attorney general.

In the brief statement he read to reporters at the Justice Department on Monday to announce his departure, Mr. Gonzales did not explain why he was resigning or refer to the turmoil over his actions as attorney general. Instead, he focused his remarks on his gratitude to Mr. Bush, who appointed Mr. Gonzales to every government job he has held since law school, beginning in Texas, and to his colleagues at the Justice Department.

"Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father's best days," Mr. Gonzales said. "I have lived the American dream." Mr. Gonzales's father was a Mexican-American construction worker who raised eight children in a two-room home near Houston.

Mr. Gonzales refused to answer questions reporters shouted to him as he hurriedly left the briefing room.

Mr. Gonzales has been a controversial figure in Washington since shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when, as White House counsel, he supported legal policies that broadly expanded the powers of the executive branch and allowed for the imprisonment and interrogation of terrorism suspects in conditions that human rights groups said amounted to torture. He became attorney general in February 2005, succeeding John Ashcroft.

The president's passionate defense of Mr. Gonzales in his comments Monday reflected the almost familial bonds of loyalty between the two men. They met when Mr. Bush was governor of Texas in the 1990s and Mr. Gonzales was a young Houston lawyer with an impressive, up-by-the-bootstraps life story about his rise from an impoverished home to the Air Force and Harvard Law School.

There were expressions of relief on Capitol Hill on Monday at news of his resignation, including from Republicans who said Mr. Gonzales's presence at the Justice Department was making it impossible for Mr. Bush to pursue his law enforcement agenda in Congress.

"Our country needs a credible, effective attorney general who can work with Congress on critical issues ranging from immigration to investigating terrorism at home and abroad," said Senator John E. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire. "Alberto Gonzales's resignation will finally allow a new attorney general to take on this task."

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who has led calls on the Judiciary Committee for Mr. Gonzales's ouster, said: "It has been a long and difficult struggle, but at last the attorney general has done the right thing and stepped down. For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional, and desperately needs new leadership."

On Monday, White House and Justice Department officials said it was Mr. Gonzales who took the initiative to step down after he returned to Washington last week from vacation in Texas. The officials said that during his time off, Mr. Gonzales and his wife, Rebecca, realized how weary they had grown of the constant criticism and concluded that he was unlikely to restore his credibility and faced a continued battering by lawmakers in both parties.

The officials said he offered his resignation on Friday in a brief telephone conversation with Mr. Bush, who was at his ranch in Crawford, and that the president immediately accepted the resignation. On Sunday, Mr. Gonzales and his wife flew to the ranch for a consoling lunch where the resignation was confirmed.

But other Republicans close to the White House and Mr. Gonzales offered a different account, suggesting that the attorney general was eased out and that the process leading to his departure unfolded over several months as Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff, and Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel, concluded that Mr. Gonzales had become a liability and quietly pushed for him to step down.

Mr. Gonzales had his defenders at the White House, chiefly Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser. The officials said that when Mr. Rove announced that he was leaving, Mr. Gonzales lost a protector.

"He was being protected, in large measure by Karl," said a Republican close to the White House. When Mr. Rove left, the Republican said, "It further exposed that the only thing that was standing with him was the president of the United States."

White House spokespeople said Monday that Mr. Bolten had not orchestrated Mr. Gonzales's resignation.

The likelihood that Mr. Gonzales was pressed to leave was strengthened by the shock the announcement caused at the Justice Department. Mr. Gonzales had told no one he was thinking about stepping aside and did not inform his chief of staff, Kevin O'Connor, until Sunday afternoon.

Mr. Gonzales had recently discussed with subordinates his plans for staying on through the remainder of the administration. He had planned his travel schedule through the fall.

Throughout the weekend, White House aides and Mr. Gonzales's spokesman denied that there were any plans for Mr. Gonzales to resign. On Sunday, Mr. Gonzales said through his chief press spokesman that he had no plans to resign.

The spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, said Sunday afternoon that he called the attorney general about the reports of his imminent resignation, "and he said it wasn't true — so I don't know what more I can say."